Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday November 08, 2010 @01:01PM
from the your-actions-are-futile dept.

dvdme writes "It seems the placebo effect isn't just valid on drugs. It's also a fact on elevators, offices and traffic lights. An article by Greg Ross says: 'In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the 'close door' button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003. Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. "You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat," said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. "Guess what? They quit calling you." In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 "walk" buttons in New York intersections do nothing. "The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on."'"

I don't want a government check; and the "free" health care I do want will be paid for out of the taxes I pay gladly that now go to put Blackwater mercenaries ($1k/day) on the ground in diplomatically touchy situations instead of trained, accountable soldiers ($50-200/day) who are fighting for something more than the money and a chance to "empty an HK into a raghead".

Posting that here on/. made me feel better. But intellectually I know I'm still not going to like what happens in the next Congress.

It's the insurance companies that pays for astroturfing that gives the appearance that we really don't want universal healthcare. What was really amazing was the number of medicare recipients protesting against universal healthcare.

The other amazing thing is how people believe that if we give tax cuts to the wealthy then jobs will magically appear. Never mind that we are talking about making Bush-era tax cuts permanent and not introducing new tax cuts. If the tax cuts were a panacea then why haven't they created new jobs in the past 3 years?

Also the US government always seem to do what is good for corporations and hardly anything good for consumers. They try to make it appear it was good for consumers. Take the current "Health Care Reforms" that the Democrats passed last year. It doesn't come close to making health care free, in fact it forces us to purchase health insurance. So on the surface it looks like the consumers are finally getting affordable healthcare, in reality the insurance corporations are getting customers who are forced to purchase insurance.

Next thing you'll see is the government promising more jobs from exports by initiating free trade with a country whose growing economy is based on jobs being outsourced from the US. Oh wait it looks like Obama wants to announce something....

There's no such thing as free healthcare. Someone has to pay somewhere along the line...

It's the insurance companies that pays for astroturfing that gives the appearance that we really don't want universal healthcare. What was really amazing was the number of medicare recipients protesting against universal healthcare.

Medicare... you mean the insurance that people were force to pay into for maybe 50 years prior to receiving it? I can't possibly see why people would want what they had already paid for, especially since, after paying those premiums, they couldn't have invested that money for their future needs, like health insurance, themselves. I'm young enough to know that I'll never get my Social Security or Medicare premiums back, s

More specifically, people want free health care but don't want "them" to have it, because "they" are moochers or lazy and are just taking advantage of the system. "If I get free handouts from the government, that's okay because I'm just getting my tax money back. God forbid someone else gets assistance, because that's my money, dammit!"

I know several people who have stated this point of view explicitly. The cognitive dissonance is tear-my-hair-out infuriating.=Smidge=

The key word is "CEOs used to do just fine." Prices carry information about scarcity and availability, they are in fact semantically meaningful. They mean something. If prices for the very top wage earners have gone up it's because they are actually worth more, it tells us their time is more valuable, and the additional wages allows them to use their time more efficiently... Even if Bill Gates were the best lawn mower in the world, the grass cutting world champion, would you have expected him to do the work

Problem with that analysis is that workers in India have no use for dollars. People don't have a direct use for money period, that's why it's called money! If money leaves the country, then it becomes more valuable here, and it will have to come back in. It's not a one-way street you know. Even if we do have a perpetual trade imbalance, that's not a bad thing either. If more dollars are leaving then entering due to China's monetary policy, we're basically getting free goods from their work force. What you a

I'll add another to your list. I'm a very small government conservative (against Department of Education, against even a large standing army, etc.). But I support socialized healthcare. Why? Because it's the only feasible pathway away from employer controlled healthcare. We've already killed the biggest noose employers put around their employees (pensions), the last big thing is health care. Once you strip that away from the employer you will see TONS of people starting up that small business they've always wanted to. Nothing will be better for capitalism in America than socializing healthcare. Mark my words. It's coming, and it'll be great when it happens.

Interesting take on the matter but I don't tend to have the faith you do that the enormous money sink that socialized medicine would create would be made up by newly created startups. It's a hell of a lot better argument than "we deserve free shit" though.

Oddly, I come from the more ultra-liberal ideas (I consider myself an anarchist) but, I agree with GP. I think what you are missing is... yes... "socialized medicine" would be a huge money sink. However, its not the creation of a money sink...its the replacement of one with another.

Medicine can only be a money sink. It is a cost, it is overhead. Right now, it is already a huge, and growing, money sink that is already a huge drag on the economy. Just because it would be a larger money sink than any of the ones that exist now, by consolidating those many sinks into one, there could be a lot of savings.

Insurance companies, really, are a sort of casino. They are just playing massive odds over large populations and offering bets. In this case, there is a purpose of course as they spread the risk of major illness and its costs amongst a large group of people. Its really just a hedge bet... A person without insurance is betting everything on not getting bankruptingly sick. A person with insurance is still betting on that, but hedging that bet against the possibility of getting sick to cut losses.

In a pure value in/value out sense, insurance is a bad buy, however, it mitigates risk, and makes itself a very good buy in that way.

That said, its become nearly a necessity. I wouldn't think of putting myself in a position where my wife and I had to go buy insurance on our own. Even in MA where a miniature version of these healthcare reforms were put in place a few years back, it is still too much of a risk.

Giving people a bit more mobility would be a good thing. Especially if it saves money overall while doing it. In the end, its not like we are going from a well working, unregulated system and nationalizing it, if we did implement it. What we have is already a huge mess.

I'll add another to your list. I'm a very small government conservative (against Department of Education, against even a large standing army, etc.). But I support socialized healthcare. Why? Because it's the only feasible pathway away from employer controlled healthcare. We've already killed the biggest noose employers put around their employees (pensions), the last big thing is health care. Once you strip that away from the employer you will see TONS of people starting up that small business they've always wanted to. Nothing will be better for capitalism in America than socializing healthcare. Mark my words. It's coming, and it'll be great when it happens.

You state a problem ("employer controlled healthcare is a noose around employees") and jump to a solution ("make it free for everyone").

Why not come up with a solution that is better aimed at the problem? Like: Pass a law that says, "you want to be in the Health Insurance Game (i.e. Wellpoint, Cigna, Humana, Aetna, United Health, etc), you are REQUIRED to accept pre-existing conditions, and offer insurance to individuals."

In fact, the government could require standardization of plan offerings across the industry (much like the government dictates what "grade A Extra Large Eggs" are). The industry group - representatives from Wellpoint, Cigna, etc. (not the government "death panels") could define what a Plan A "The Insurance Company takes all the risk" through Plan Z "Insured is willing to take more risk". If we were all looking at the same "industry norms" menu, we could make logical decisions for ourselves.

Since I'm really only concerned about catastrophic, I would like to buy a plan Z, and I'll deal with my own minor issues.

Imagine this: right now I have a prescription for a daily medication that the insurance company is only willing to pay for one every four days. So somehow, when faced with the "buy it for $117 or pass on it", I get by without it. I am making economic decisions. We all should be making economic decisions. Now, this isn't a life-or-death decision for me, it's addressing a minor inconvenience. But I'm good with that.

I fail to see how paying for any idiot to walk into an emergency room because they have a headache is going to spur entrepreneurship!

The government can give $10 to educational charities or $100 to prisons. I want the smallest government possible, so I'm for Head Start. That program causes a reduction in other services that, overall, saves me money.

But then, there are those that would rather spend $1000 on prisons than give one "needy" person $1 because they are anti-charity, not for an effective expenditure of money.

Like which ones? I can't think of any agencies that don't do what they are supposed to.

TSA for one. Unless you think their stated purpose to "protect the nation's transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce" is not its real purpose.

And, if you think the TSA really is performing its stated purpose - note that not one single person "caught" by the TSA has been convicted, or even prosecuted, for being a terrorist threat to the flight they were prevented from boarding.

So no direct successes. Nor is the evidence for deterrence very strong either - if they were turning terrorists away from air planes they would just attack other targets, but the number of terrorist attacks on other targets has been something less than 1 per year and even those were smaller scale than thousands of drug-related violent crimes during the same period.

Just because I partake in teh vendor supplied free lunch doesn't mean I depend on it for sustenance. With our strategic reserve as well as maximum production capacity we could run the country for quite some time with no foreign oil. It would be more expensive of course, so why wouldn't we purchase cheaper foreign oil while it's available?

All of those agencies do what they are supposed to. Are you complaining because they aren't 100% absolutely perfect in every way? If that's your standard, then I concede the point.

But it's not my standard. The EPA has successfully helped the environment by a huge margin since it started. Social Security in fact helps millions of people every day. As a child I received medical care through Medicare (or was it Medicaid? whichever, the point stands).

That's what I'm saying. Hey, if you (the general "you", not necessarily you specifically, Mr Mouse) oppose health care for the needy, then it's fine to oppose Medicare, but it's plainly WRONG to say that it doesn't do what it is supposed to. Same with the other things you have mentioned.

NCLB isn't a program or an agency, and I also don't support it, but it has had the intended effect of putting pressure on schools, rearranging funding, and blah blah whatever other details. I oppose it, but not because it hasn't been effective.

Even if you are afraid of the worse of the Coke/Pepsi candidates getting in, and therefore vote for the lesser or greater Hamiltonian parties we have today, you should still vote third party some of the time.

Specifically, if the race is polling such that the outcome is not in doubt (either for or against your candidate) then your vote becomes meaningless in deciding the outcome. At that point VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE, (e.g. if you want Libertarian ideals, vote L)

It is a small thing, but every little scratch we can put in the prison walls of the two party system helps.

If you have the short-sighted strategy of trying to get the best viable candidate into office this term for whatever small change he will do, yes you can waste your vote on third party candidates. If your strategy (like mine) is to break the two-party system in the long run, any vote that isn't third party is a waste of a vote.

That's the point. The drinks in the original post have some nutrition value. Diet Coke and Coke Zero are made to trick your senses, make you feel better about your choice, and not solve the existing problem. That is, they are an chemical concoction that is designed to deceive your taste buds, is passed as the healthy choice, and actually increases your thirst.

That's the point. The drinks in the original post have some nutrition value. Diet Coke and Coke Zero are made to trick your senses, make you feel better about your choice, and not solve the existing problem. That is, they are an chemical concoction that is designed to deceive your taste buds, is passed as the healthy choice, and actually increases your thirst.

Can I just repeat that, except it is not just your taste buds that are deceived, but also bits of your body chemistry that prepare to handle incoming sugar, then find that there was no sugar, and then they seriously _want_ sugar. There is also the danger of developing diabetes which happens when you feed the body too much sugar - fake sugar has exactly the same effect. And twice the effects if you drink diet coke and then eat sweets because your body wants the sugar.

Funny thing... my dad spent his career designing intersections and the systems which run them...

Those buttons do function. How they function depends on the local traffic control system. Generally the computer controlling the system notes that someone is waiting to cross and alters the timing of upcoming signal events to allow for pedestrians to safely cross.
Your dad was right though, nothing happens immediately when you push the button.

You joke, but during the Suharto regime in Indonesia (1967 - 1998) they held elections and a large part of the population thought they lived in a democracy as a result. They had a very large, and politically diverse, number of parties and they allowed them all to have rallies etc.

Come election day, nothing ever changed and the people were more content than they would have been without the illusion of political contention, it was very educational to watch.

I was actually wondering last night why governments in places like myanmar bother with voter intimidation when they only need to do a bit of number magic for vote counting (which happens away from the eye of [most] members of the public).

Iran tried that recently and it ended up being the closest they've come to losing control in the last 30 years. You might argue they just weren't slick enough, but that's a risk in and of itself too.

With a straight face, yes Al Gore would have gone to war with Iraq in his first term.

The Clinton/Gore administration were hawkish on Iraq from 1993 on. The escalation of bombing radar, C2 and C3 nodes in the Northern and Southern No-fly zones were all Clinton policies. Desert Fox was a Clinton administration operation, and the Democrats were fired up in 1999 to start a war with Serbia and invaded Haiti in 1995.

Al Gore ran in 2000 as being more interventionist abroad than George W. Bush did

With a straight face, yes Al Gore would have gone to war with Iraq in his first term.

I don't buy that, you fail to account for two things. First, the Cheney factor. Secondly the fact that Gore would have probably been busy in Afghanistan as retaliation for 9-11. Its possible he might have just sent in some special forces and concentrated on getting Bin-Laden. Given the f**kup in Tora bora, which probably can be blamed partially on the Iraq "strategy" its possible we might actually have been out of the inter

Of course, the disproof of your position is simple and actually happened.

An individual vote is worthless. No election with more than probably 10,000 voters (WAG here) would ever proceed to conclusion if the tally was 50% +1. The uncertainty would make recounts essentially unending, interested parties would split hairs until their donors' budgets ran out and the larger team of lawyers "won" and were vindicated by an "authority". People would be angry and call for a different outcome, but their voices wo

You mean the one that is ruled by the rich because of the people who let it be ruled by the rich (and the people that vote for the same two parties over and over again)? Yeah, what a nice democracy! I just love it when the government is able to pass bills and laws which clearly violate our freedom and privacy without the consent of the people, and what's worse is that people seem to support these bills and laws because they 'stop' those dirty 'terrorists'. I'd say these idiots are in need of

I thought the walk-buttons was just there because no-one bothered to remove them, and later because they shared house with the beeper that helped blind people. So a lot of crossing had walk-buttons simply because they had beepers, even if the walk button wasn't connected.

If no one ever tells the masses that the elevator or crosswalk buttons don't do anything then of course they're going to keep pressing them. They may not help but the person doesn't know that it doesn't make a difference. At least when you hit something with a hammer you know something happened.

Computerized traffic lights are almost as old as traffic lights. There has been a phase of electro-mechanical lights, but that did not last long. While I cannot speak for the US, in most European locations you want the pedestrian push buttons to function. If there is no pedestrian then you can skip the pedestrian phase, which saves a lot of time. As pedestrians are slow.

If there is no pedestrian then you can skip the pedestrian phase, which saves a lot of time. As pedestrians are slow.

Ah, you see it is different in the United States - there is no pedestrian phase. They just 'allow' pedestrians to cross when traffic is moving in their direction. So, if North South traffic has a green light, North South pedestrians have a green light. Similarly for East West.

The vast majority of traffic lights in the United States don't apparently have a separate period for pedestrians to cross unencumbered by motor vehicles - which outside the big cities are also allowed to turn left of a red light, even when pedestrians have a Walk signal.

That must depend on where you are. Where I live (NYS), they have been installing more and more pedestrian signals, and they most definitely work. When someone presses the 'cross' button traffic is stopped in all directions (including a red arrow to block right-on-red) for somewhere between 25 and 45 seconds, depending on how wide the street is. During this time a countdown is displayed to the pedestrians to let them know how long they have to complete crossing. If no-one pushes the cross button that pha

It's usually right that you turn off of a red light, being the US and us driving on the right and all. And it's only certain big cities... it's perfectly legal to turn right on red in Minneapolis and Denver, as well as many other places. That said, the pedestrian always has right of way during those times. I actually don't mind walking around most big cities in the US... it's not that hard to pay attention to your surroundings and make sure the big metal boxes don't hit you.

They just 'allow' pedestrians to cross when traffic is moving in their direction.

There might ALSO be a longer duration of green/walk light combination, to allow the pedestrian to get across. (At least in some places, apparently not NYC, if you don't hit the walk button, it will stay Don't Walk even when that direction's traffic light is green.)

That being said, you are taught that pedestrians have the right of way in such cases, and even on a geen light you are supposed to look before turning. It's hardly the traffic control devices' problem that people persist in ignoring those rules.

But in America, there is usually never a pedestrian phase. The "don't walk" and "walk" lights mean "walk now to get run over by speeding oncoming vehicles" and "walk now to get run over by slower turning vehicles", respectively. So when you pressed the walk button, all it would do is accelerate the normal cycle and let the other cars go. Sometimes people would jump out of their cars and press the pedestrian button so they could go sooner. It's part of the reason why half the population fled the cities i

My computer isn't responding when I click an icon. I click again. Nothing. So I click it really hard 30 times in a row. Now the computer decides to respond. Clearly, the computer can read my frustration, and therefore hurries to open the 32 firefox windows I requested.

The button that you press after you get, "slowdown cowboy" that asks you to wait 1 minute before posting again, does nothing. No matter how many minutes elapse, that button never gets reactivated. Slashdotters have typically installed greasemonkey, flashblock, adblock, noscript and thousand other add ons, they just blame their javascript interceptor is misbehaving and continue on.

Well yes and no. It is true that most of them have no effect in normal operation, but when the elevator is in service mode (i.e. apartment move mode), then doors stay open until you press the close button.

In my sister's apartment, the close button has a effect. The normal door open time is about 40 seconds, and it will close the instant you press the close button (i.e. after 5 seconds). In the office building that I'm in (mid 60s construction), the close button has no effect unless the elevator is in service mode).

the close door buttons DO work in our building (FWIW we have Otis) but there's a trick which I've experimentally confirmed: something has to trip the sensor between the inner & outer doors to make it think someone has gotten on or off. I can consistently (100x out of 100 tries) replicate the following behavior: if elevator stops on floor w/nobody waiting I simply waive my hand in the gap, press the close button & the doors immediately close/elevator continues - press the button w/o something having tripped the sensor & it just sits there till its normal timeout period.

individual results may vary but I've successfully been doing this for 10+ yrs at my current employer...

I've also seen thermostats that, while they don't directly control the system, do alter the way the system cycles.

This might be a rational illusion your brain constructs because on one hand the thermostat control doesn't produce directly observable results, on the other hand it looks like a pretty legit button, so we just assume that the input actually goes somewhere into a complex and intelligent system where it will be observed and acted upon in some convoluted and unprovable way. Because it feels like th

I've also seen thermostats that, while they don't directly control the system, do alter the way the system cycles. I believe it's some kind of 'intelligent' system that realizes if Department A wants 70F and Department B (next door, open air) wants 90F, it's a waste of energy doing them separately and just pushes out 80F.

I worked at a facility where a thermostat set above seventy-something is in air conditioning mode and set below that is heating mode. And I worked with morons whom alternated it at extremes and then couldn't figure out why the HVAC didn't work. I get to work and its about 50 in the cubes... cow orker says "I'm freezing so I set it to 85"... "Well, don't you think 85 is kind of high for the airconditioner?" I turn it down to 70 and we warm right up. Same deal in the summer. Its 90 in the cubes because some clown set it to 60 placing us in heating mode, and god knows its well above 60 so nothing happens. I crank it up to 75 and we're soon chilling. And the amazing part is these people NEVER LEARNED. Ever. I would imagine they're still all screwed up.

I'm amazed how many people think HVAC is strictly proportional and the thermostat tells the machinery how hard to work. That technology exists but is rare and expensive and you almost certainly don't have it.

I worked at a facility where a thermostat set above seventy-something is in air conditioning mode and set below that is heating mode. And I worked with morons whom alternated it at extremes and then couldn't figure out why the HVAC didn't work. I get to work and its about 50 in the cubes... cow orker says "I'm freezing so I set it to 85"... "Well, don't you think 85 is kind of high for the airconditioner?" I turn it down to 70 and we warm right up. Same deal in the summer. Its 90 in the cubes because some clown set it to 60 placing us in heating mode, and god knows its well above 60 so nothing happens. I crank it up to 75 and we're soon chilling. And the amazing part is these people NEVER LEARNED. Ever. I would imagine they're still all screwed up.

One can easily imagine why given the ridiculously baroque and counter-intuitive system you've just described.

I'm amazed how many people think HVAC is strictly proportional and the thermostat tells the machinery how hard to work. That technology exists but is rare and expensive and you almost certainly don't have it.

A quite reasonable expectation with any thermostat is that when you set the temperature on it, that is the temperature the system will reach and maintain. A perfectly reasonable conclusion from that assumption is that the system will attempt to attain the initial temperature relatively quickly without "overshooting", and thus a larger delta will bring the temperature down quicker.

I remember when we first moved to Phoenix, and I saw air conditioners with thermostats that had to be put into either "heat" or "cool" mode (and then had separate sets of thresholds for each). All I could do it just shake my head and wonder what idiot ever came up with that interface, and why.

I'm the jogger. If you would have looked, made eye contact, and given me the right away to cross, I would not have to hit that button.
I KNOW it causes you a longer wait.
As soon as you learn that it is faster to yield to the pedestrian than to wait for a whole light cycle, the situation will change.
As it is, you show no sign of yielding, so I hit the button.

I read an article in the Washington Post ~20 years ago about people waiting in lines. A hotel was constantly receiving complaints about the speed of their elevators. They kept tweaking the elevators, but the complaints continued to roll in (despite the quantifiable improvements). Rather than continuing to pursue the problem with technology, they turned to psychology and installed mirrors in the elevator lobby. Seems that if people have something interesting to look at (to them at least), the time passes more quickly and they do not notice that the elevators are slow. After they made this final change, the complaints stopped. I think about this every time I see a mirror in an elevator lobby.

I was recently in an office building where the elevators had no buttons at all. In front of the elevator was a keypad where you typed which floor you needed to go to, the system assigned you an elevator and you could only get on and be delivered to your earlier chosen floor.

"Placebo effect" implies a perceived improvement. I think it's obvious by the number of times people push elevator close door or street "walk" buttons, or fiddle with office thermostats, there is no perceived improvement.

"Placebo" refers to situation where a patient does not know that the medication is inactive.

I am not sure about everyone, but I happen to know that most "close" buttons on elevators and most street crossing buttons to activate a pedestrian traffic lights do not work (the former by design, they are there for fire control mode, the latter mainly because they are broken:) ).However, I still continue to use them and the reason is very simple:1. They still work occasionally (as was the case just last week in a hotel elevator, where doors would close immediately by using close button, and stay open for extended periods of time without it, tested many times). It's a "nice surprise" when it works - and nothing is lost when it does not work.

2. They may be required occasionally. I know of a quite a few intersections where pedestrian traffic light won't turn green without the use of a button. It's not worth wasting a few traffic light cycles to find out whether the button is or is not needed. It's easier to just press it - if it works, great, if not - again nothing lost.

So, to conclude, this situation is nothing like placebo.

Well, perhaps except for thermostats, but I haven't worked in the office in years - and when I did, never bothered with these things.

I agree. This seems more like behaviorism - if I push this button, I may get a reward.

As for the thermostats, they are kidding themselves if they think people actually believe they work. People stop calling because at that point the realize it is pointless to continue complaining, because nothing is going to be done about the situation.

Also - I don't know about you, but when I press a "close doors" or a "use crosswalk" button and press it, and nothing happens, I tend to press it again. If there was a placebo effect in play, why would I bother pressing it again? The placebo effect suggests that I would be happy with the outcome, rather than stabbing relentlessly away at a soulless machine, like a rat trying to get a food pellet, muttering and cursing the infernal, non functional button and the soul sucking society it seems to embody, when all I want to do is get downstairs and across the street to a bar so I can drown my sorrows in a few glasses of gin and try to muster the courage to talk to that girl who is always there even though I know she's probably damaged goods and wouldn't give me the time of day besides...

They are a good aid in me repeatedly hitting it both before and after someone boards the elevator, and a visual aid to my sighing in exasperation when they make it on the elevator. They convey exactly the message I intended.

Ah, one of the first positive things that I noticed when I moved overseas was that the "door close" buttons on elevators actually worked. You push them, the door closes. It's that sort of literal-mindedness when a culture apes another culture without knowing why it's doing so. The "how" but not the "why". They didn't know that door close buttons were placebos put in place to lie about giving control. Instead, they connected them up to the control circuits, and when you press the button, by God, the elevator doors close. You can even close the doors directly after they open, ignoring the pleas of people running to get in. Heh, that was another education as well, seeing as I had previously thought that holding elevator doors open for random strangers was something that 'everybody did' - turns out, it's just our culture that does it.

The elevator close button not doing anything is certainly true most places in the U.S. It isn't worth pushing the button. Go somewhere like Hong Kong, though, and when you hit the door close button the doors close right now. If someone is halfway through the door when you hit it, too bad - they get chopped in half. I love it.

Walk buttons are different. I can see not having them hooked up at busy intersections, especially at intersections where there are always (or nearly always) pedestrians waiting to cross. Where I live, the buttons absolutely work - the walk signal doesn't illuminate and the signal timings are different if you don't push the button. It is all about maximizing the flow of vehicular traffic while protecting pedestrians. Interesting that they leave the buttons there even when they don't do anything, but I seriously doubt there are many (if any) places where walk buttons were installed purely for the placebo effect.

Also - you call that an article? Worst. Submission. Ever.Here is a rule of thumb for article submitters: if you can repeat the entire 'article' in the summary, you chose a bad article. Try at least digging up some of the original sources to link to (like the Wall Street Journal article mentioned).

Any single explanation would be a gross over-simplification, so here goes.

When you press the “walk” button, one or more of the following may occur:

(a) nothing different, lights are timed and the green and walk signals turn on when they would normally have(b) signal turns green sooner that it would otherwise have (it may not have turned green at all without pressing the button)(c) signal stays green longer to give pedestrians extra time to cross(d) oncoming traffic’s green signal and/or lef

After reaching the level cap, I'd join pug groups and in the role of "healer". I had gear with special effects that did nothing and created all manner of macros to create these effects while at the same time emoting that I was healing my target.

After the wipe, when they'd call me on it (I have yet to find an addon that will monkey with other people's trackers) I'd try to explain that I was doing this strictly for research and they were in the placebo group.

All these examples seem a bit specific or they assume the people affected are all too dumb to realize someone's trying to fool them...

'In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the 'close door' button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003.

Around here most elevators don't even seem to have a "close" button, they do have an "open" button though. And if you press one of the "go to floor #n" buttons the doors tend to close immediately. As an example, in the building I live in the best way to get the doors to close quickly is to pass through the elevator door and make sure you're clear of the "don't squish the humans" sensor and then hit a floor button, door closes immediately and elevator gets going.

Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. "You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat," said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. "Guess what? They quit calling you."

Duh. Of course people stop calling you, they're sweating their asses off and you show up and say "nothing wrong here" half a dozen times and then you install a thermostat that doesn't work. Most likely they just end up figuring out how to disable the alarm connected to the windows so they can get some relief that way (seriously, I've seen this problem in several workplaces, the building maintenance guys swear up and down that the ventilation system is fine yet one office which isn't even facing the sun most of the day has stuffy air and a constant temperature above 25 C, in the latest case they finally installed a thermostat that did nothing, we just stopped calling them about the issue (the thermostat was clearly not connected to anything)).

In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 "walk" buttons in New York intersections do nothing. "The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on."'"

Here in.se the buttons do work. In fact, if you don't press the button the light never turns green. You still have to wait until the lights for the cars are right though (which kind of sucks, it just switches the light for pedestrians from a default "you're not allowed to cross" to "please wait your turn".

When I was a young-hacker, I worked as a bellman.. It was slack work except when tour busses came in and then it was a scramble to get luggage up to the rooms. It meant multiple trips with a full cart and no passengers... What I couldn't handle was the long rides down to the lobby stopping at 10+ floors to pickup additional passengers... I soon discovered that if I held the 'door close' button while the elevator was descending, it would stop at the floors where people had pushed the 'down' button but the door wouldn't open. The elevator would stop. Hesitate for about 1.5 seconds, and then start moving again. The unfortunate drawback was that outside of the car, the 'down' light would go out and the waiting passengers would have to press it again to call for another elevator. I then learned that I didn't have to hold the door-close button. If I felt the car slow down and managed to press the button before the car came to a full stop, I could trigger the override.

Eventually, I got a copy of a master key (which I still have) that allowed me to just put the elevator in service mode and didn't have to override anything.

I've known for years now that close door buttons in elevators have no effect. I've been in dozens of elevators and have tried the button for the hell of it to no avail. I don't bother anymore. I always assumed there was some kind of associated safety law. What I don't get is why they keep the damn button there; I assume it's cheaper to do so than to remove the button for the US market. I do know for a fact that the button does work overseas. It's why I would try the button when I got back to the States.

Honestly, I don't know if in this particular case it's a placebo effect so much as Americans being conditioned to believe that anything in a public space is likely busted or not working properly. There seems to be a general state of disrepair in the US that I haven't really encountered in other countries. On the one hand, you've got ham-fisted oafs and outright vandals who are compelled to break everything in sight. And on the other hand, you've got service people who can't be bothered to do their jobs, or management which apparently doesn't take enough pride to pay to get things fixed. But then, if something keeps getting broken, eventually you just give up and leave it be.

I often get up early to jog or bike. At 6:00 AM, when I'm on a side street coming to an intersection with an arterial, and the light is red for me and green for the arterial, pressing the walk button will _immediately_ change the light for the arterial to yellow.

At 8:00 AM, however, with rush-hour traffic clogging up the arterial, the walk button appears to do nothing.

So, I went to the link to read TFA, and realized that the TFS isn't a summary at all. It's just a copy/paste of the entire blog post with the line breaks taken out. It's amazing what constitutes "New for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" these days...

I'm generally amazed when a button actually DOES work. (I lived in a building where the elevator doors instantly responded. That was great.)

When buttons do nothing, I just fume at the city or whatever agency I happen to live under the management of.

But Placebo?

Far too much is attributed to that effect. I think there must be a sliding scale of environmental awareness where some people are a lot more easily fooled than others. Heck, I know this to be true. I wonder if perhaps those who cry, "Placebo Effect!" are among those who are more easily fooled and thus have a hard time working out what reality is actually doing most of the time. Perhaps this is why science is so important to them? Their instincts are poor and thus they need a reliable system of reality reading, not to fall back on or use in conjunction with, but as their primary guide to existence.

You're darn tootin' we notice!!!! They HVAC people stopped getting calls because people got tired of adjusting the thermostat that never worked and calling the HVAC people. While we may sometimes push that "Close Door" button on the elevator, those of us who use an elevator long enough have realized the timing hasn't been effected since "the late '90s". Isn't New York in enough debt without having to install extra push buttons on every corner of the city if the buttons aren't going to do anything?

And psychologists wonder why Americans are so up tight, their blood pressure skyrocketing, etc... because the darn "conveniences" don't flippin' work! And apparently, they don't work on purpose. And then we get felt up and/or violated when we use the convenience of quickly traveling from one place to another.

1) Some lights change at the same rate, regardless of pressing the button.2) Lights with chirpers/beepers/buzzers will only make noises if the button is pushed. I think all of these change at the same interval regardless of pressing the button, the button merely tells the light to activate the speaker when it switches.3) In the suburb where I live, the walk lights won't show unless you hit the button. The timing of the traffic lights doesn't change, you just get a nice walk light. This is rather obnoxious because you get yelled at if you cross when a walk light would have been active if you had hit the button...4) Some lights won't change unless you hit the button - about the same as described by the poster from Austin.5) The one light I know for absolute sure doesn't do anything if you hit the button, is near where I work. Hit the button, don't hit the button, do either all day, it doesn't matter, the sign will never switch to "walk"...

If even one of them works, doesn't that mean I have to push them just to be sure?

Exactly. If you press a control that doesn't work you lose nothing. If you fail to press a control that does work you lose functionality. Whilst I agree with the effect they're suggesting, presenting it using examples of deliberately wiring-in dummies is ridiculous. If they then go back and ask people if they believed the button in question actually worked, well then there's the begins of the data we actually need for this.